Birthdays: Enrico Caruso, Pierre Auguste
Renoir, Zeppo Marx, St. Louis (King Louis IX of France), Bobby Riggs, Carl
Eller, Sir Anthony Burgess, Neil Jordan, Larry Gelbart, Tom Courtenay, Sean
Astin is 45, Tea Leoni, John Foster Dulles, Neil Jordan is 66
1932- TOONTOWN SCANDALS. Former Australian
prizefighter Pat Sullivan was the producer of the Felix the Cat cartoons, the
first true animation star. Although animator Otto Mesmer actually created him,
Sullivan's name is the only one on the titles. Felix was one of the top film
stars of the 1920s. Lindbergh supposedly had a Felix doll with him in the Spirit
of St. Louis and his body shape was the prototype of Mickey Mouse and dozens of
other characters. While Mesmer quietly drew pictures Sullivan lived the fast
life of a roaring twenties celebrity.
Mrs. Marjorie Sullivan had been having an
affair with her chauffeur. After a nasty scene when husband confronted wife and
the chauffeur fled, Mrs. Sullivan mysteriously fell out of her window to her
death. The scandal was front page news and Sullivan never got over it. He soon
drank himself to death, which during Prohibition was difficult to do.
Sullivan's death and his failure to get Felix into sound cartoons doomed his
studio. Otto Mesmer went on to animate the first Broadway light signs but did
not receive any recognition for his contributions to animation until he was
re-introduced to the public at a Bob Clampett night at the Museum of Modern Art
in 1975. Kid animators Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito were in the audience.
1956- Poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
met at a party in Cambridge England.
1957- Buddy Holly and the Crickets record
"That'll Be the Day."
1971- Oh Calcutta, the first play with
lots of actors shedding their clothes, premiered on Broadway at the Belasco.
1983- Famous playwright Tennessee Williams
was found dead in a New York hotel room. He died when he choked on a nose spray
bottle cap that fell into his mouth while he was using the spray. Others say it
was a Pepsi bottle cap.
1996- Dr Haing Ngor, the doctor who
survived the Cambodian Killing Fields holocaust and won an Academy Award in a
movie of the same name, was killed in a robbery attempt outside his Los Angeles
home.
2004- Movie star uber-Catholic Mel
Gibson’s movie the "The Passion of the Christ" opened in North
America. The film was criticized for it’s perceived anti-Semitism, it was the
first movie in which Jesus spoke his real language –Aramaic. Pastors bought
blocks of tickets for their congregations. The film earned nearly a billion
dollars, most of the profit earned by Mel Gibson, who was the films sole investor.
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